


speak what your heart wants you to

by TheJGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M, Fluff, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 15,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6254824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of reylo prompt fills, mostly from tumblr, all pre-TLJ</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 13. A drunk kiss

**Author's Note:**

> I got three prompts all in a row and I was like, eh, I need to just start a collection of these. So here it is. If you have anything you want me to write, drop me a line on here or on tumblr!  
> Title from Tell Her You Love Her by Echosmith

“Benny-”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Ben-ny,” she repeats, dragging it out. He rolls his eyes, more fondly exasperated than genuinely irritated.

“You’re really drunk, you know that?”

“Shut up, I’m a perfectly reasonable amount of drunk.”

“Liar.”

Rey stumbles sideways and he catches her around the waist, just barely, pulling her back up onto the sidewalk. She grimaces. “Okay, maybe you have a point.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he snarks back, rolling his eyes.

He keeps his arm there, tight around her waist, holding her against his side, and she tries in vain to ignore the flutter in her stomach and everything in her head that is screaming at her heart to get itself under control, just like it has been for a year since coincidence brought them back into each other’s lives. He’s her former foster brother, for Christ’s sake, older than her by an embarrassing margin, and she’s been hopelessly in love with him since she was fourteen and she figured out why his broad shoulders and brooding eyes and the way he cheated on his cynical, angry persona to be nice to her and show her how to do magic tricks and mess up her hair and call her “brat” made something behind her ribs swoop and soar like a just-freed songbird. Then he got fed up with his parents and took off abruptly when she was sixteen, leaving her behind with an affectionate tap of his knuckles to her cheek and a vague not-quite promise that they’d see each other again, but no forwarding address. When he moved in with her best friend’s boyfriend, who happened to be Ben’s childhood friend that she somehow hadn’t known about, nobody told her, so they were both equally surprised one morning when she banged on the door looking for Finn and was greeted by a groggy Sunday-morning Ben and the realization that, no, her crush  _ hadn’t _ gone away. In fact, it was back with a vengeance, and worse now that they were both adults and she realized that she liked him beyond her teen-girl admiration, especially now that his youthful angry dickishness seemed to have mellowed into early-onset old-man grumpiness, complete with a total unwillingness to drink at parties and a general preference to sit on the sidelines and watch other people make fools of themselves, which is how they got to here, Ben half-carrying her down the street in a valiant attempt to get her home in one piece.

“Benny, I have a question.”

“You’re not going to stop calling me that, are you?” he sighs, long-suffering.

“Not in a million years, Benny.” Rey grins at him, bright and wide, and if she were less drunk she’d probably notice that his exasperated god-help-me look towards the heavens mostly just serves to hide the color coming to his cheeks.

“Okay, fine,  _ Rey-Rey _ ,” he says, using the nickname she’d detested as a kid. It makes her feel small and unpleasantly childish, and she scowls.

“Fine, fine, I’m sorry for calling you Benny.”

“No you’re not,” he replies, knocking his head against hers. “Brat.”

Somehow that makes it even worse, the reminder that no matter how old they are and how mature she is and how far they’ve come from the days when she was an awkward, skinny girl hidden behind baggy sweatshirts and too many science books, she’s still just a kid sister to him, at best. So she yanks herself away from him and tries her damndest to storm ahead, ignoring the way everything tips and whirls around her, fully aware she’s probably doing a lot more undignified staggering than anything.

“Rey, what are you doing?”

“I’m going home, leave me alone.”

“No way, it’s like three in the morning, I’m not leaving you by yourself out here.”

Rey stops in her tracks and turns around to glare at him. “I don’t need you to look after me, Ben, I’m not a  _ kid _ .” She resists the urge to stomp her foot petulantly, settling for crossing her arms.

He just frowns at her, surprised. “What does that have to do with anything?”

She grimaces, abashed and childish in her hurt. “You called me ‘brat.’”

“I won’t call you ‘brat’ anymore, then. Come on, you can barely stand on your own, just let me get you home.” He reaches out for her, but she pulls away again.

“No, apologize first. You never apologize for anything.”

“I’m sorry for making you feel infantilized,” he says, “now,  _ please _ come over here before you fall over.”

“I accept your apology,” she replies, tucking herself back against his side, and he settles his arm back around her.

“I don’t see you as a kid, you know,” he says, walking slowly, half-holding her up. “It was weird, at first, because- I mean, you were sixteen the last time I’d seen you, and I kind of forgot that time existed, and then suddenly you’re all… smart and capable and put-together. You’re a better adult than I am, and I’ve got  _ years _ on you.”

“I’ve always been better than you,” she shoots back with that same wide grin.

“Pretty much,” he says, smiling and ducking his head. It lights her up a little bit inside, more than she already is from the combination of his hand splayed across her waist and the smell of him heavy in her nose- boy soap and cigarette smoke and that inexplicable  _ Ben _ smell she’d recognize anywhere. It’s comforting and thrilling all at once, and when they get to the apartment she shares with Finn, who’s out for the night, she’s loathe to pull away so she can get out her keys. She’s also too uncoordinatedly drunk to properly unlock the door, so Ben has to do it for her.

“You never asked me your question,” he says, hands in his pockets on the doormat, tempting her to ask him inside.

“It was stupid,” she replies, turning and leaning against the doorframe for stability.

“Well now you  _ have _ to ask,” he says, his grin wolfish, ready to tease.

She looks down at her shoes and almost mumbles it. “Have you ever been in love?”

When she glances up at him through her eyelashes, he looks like he’s been punched, and she wants to run away and slam the door and pretend it never happened. As if reading her mind, he reaches out and catches her by the wrist, stepping in closer, invading her space, taking her breath away. “What if I said I was right now?” he murmurs, cautious, searching her face.

She reaches up, tangling her hand in his hair, pulling him down to meet her lips. It’s a careful kiss, more than anything, both of them still hesitant to acknowledge the truth sitting heavy in between them, and then she sighs into his mouth and it’s like a switch is flipped, his arms coming up around her to pull her in against him, pressing her up against the doorframe, his teeth on her bottom lip, all the earnestness of something long restrained. When he finally pulls back, his pupils are blown so wide she can barely make out the chocolate-brown of his eyes around them.

“Does that answer your question?” she says, breathless and grinning, and he leans down to kiss her again, chaste and sweet, his hand coming up to caress her face. It definitely answers hers.


	2. 11. Surprise kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got some anon hate on tumblr so here’s my REVENGE FLUFF

“I’m gonna do it, Poe.”

“Sure you are,” Poe responds, rolling his eyes but not looking up from his phone.

“No, for real this time. It’s gonna  _ happen _ .” Ben’s hands curl into determined fists on either side of his notebook. “I’m gonna ask her to prom.”

“Yeah man, Ben Yo-”

“If you say ‘Ben Yolo’ again-”

“ _ Ben Yolo _ .”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

Poe scrambles immediately to his feet, running out of the room and slamming the door behind him just in time for Ben to run into it with a loud thud.

“Do not tear down my house!” Leia shouts from the kitchen downstairs.

“Sorry!” the boys chorus.

Across town, Rey is sprawled on the floor next to Finn’s bed, her face buried in her physics textbook. She groans loudly, and a cursory glance at her phone shows one unread text from “?¿? Weird Alien ?¿?” so he reaches over and pats her consolingly on the head.

“You should just ask Ben to prom.”

“I can’t do  _ that _ ,” she huffs.

“Yes you can, it’s 2016, you’re a modern woman, Rey!”

“But he’s cute and intimidating.” She pulls her head out of her textbook just to pout up at Finn. “I’ll chicken out and make myself look like an idiot.”

“No more of an idiot than he looks,” Finn mutters under his breath with a roll of the eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing. Trust me, Rey, I have it on good authority that if you say something it will go well for you.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Is it Poe?”

“Maybe.”

“Poe can’t be trusted, he has ulterior motives.”

“What ulterior motives could  _ Poe Dameron _ possibly have?”

“He wants me and Ben together for the group photos.”

Finn sighs. “You’re just looking for reasons not to believe me, now.”

Rey buries her face in her arms and groans again.

Back at Poe’s house the next day, Poe is sitting backwards in his desk chair, watching Ben pace back and forth as he talks himself through a fucking  _ speech _ about why Rey should go to prom with him. It’s completely ridiculous and Poe just hopes he’s there when Ben tries to give it so he can see what a disaster it’s inevitably going to be.

Ben stops and looks at Poe. “Is it too much?”

“Ben, you have notecards.”

“Too much.”

“A little.”

Across town, Finn’s phone beeps, but he’s out of the room, so Rey picks it up. There’s two unopened texts sitting on the lockscreen, both from Poe, and she sees Ben’s name in one of them. She considers tapping in Finn’s password, but she has better manners than that, and Finn’ll probably tell her if she asks, so as soon as he walks back through the door with a bag of trail mix and two oreos in his mouth she throws his phone at him, clocking him in the shoulder. He barely catches it and makes offended, incredulous noises at her.

“Check the texts and tell me what Poe’s saying about Ben I have to  _ know _ !”

Finn drops the trail mix in her lap and hands her one of the oreos and taps at his phone for a minute. He breaks into a wide grin behind the cookie still between his teeth.

“Tell me!” she half-whines, whacking him on the leg.

“No way,” he says, muffled by the food in his mouth. “You’ll find out eventually.”

Rey huffs and falls back against the headboard of his bed, thunking her skull against the wall. “You’re the worst.”

“You love me.”

“I do.”

Ben sits up from his position on the floor with a gasp. “A poem! Poe, I should write a poem.”

Poe groans, pressing his face into his hands. “Ben, for the love of god-”

“Roses are red-”

“No, I’m stopping you right there. No. That is not how you get a girl to like you.”

Ben pouts dramatically. “What do I  _ do _ , then?”

“You’re so inept,” Poe sighs. “Come up with a witty slogan, put it on some posterboard. Boom. Promposal.”

Rey is on high alert all week for anything that would shed light on whatever it is Poe and Ben are conspiring about that Finn won’t tell her. It’s starting to kill her. It would be ironic to die of suspense and never find out the truth, but Rey is determined to survive until the mystery is solved, come hell or high water or sleepless nights wondering what the  _ hell  _ is going on. Finn tells her she’s being very melodramatic teen girl and she just hits him and reminds him she  _ is _ a teen girl and melodrama is completely appropriate when dealing with a crush of such devastating magnitude, thank-you-very-much.

And then, on Friday, in the last-period English class they share, it happens.

She feels the slight tap of something hitting her in the back of the head, and she turns around to find a paper airplane on the floor. When she unfolds it, she finds Ben’s wild chicken-scratch reading, “Poe said this would be a good idea. Prom?” Then, in a different color, as if added later, his name. After the rush of warm, fluttery feeling in her stomach subsides, she turns in her seat to see him looking at her with one eyebrow up and that patented Ben Solo smirk, which awakens the butterflies all over again like it always does. She mouths  _ yes _ , and his smirk grows into a full grin, and she turns back to face the front of the room to hide her own giddy smile behind her hands, missing his tiny victorious fist-pump.

But then she gets home that night, and she’s taping it to the wall next to her desk, and one of the other kids in the group home stops in the doorway and snorts at her. “Seriously, did he put  _ any _ effort into that? He obviously doesn’t care very much. I hope you said no.”

And that just… well, it fucking hurts.

She spends half the night awake, staring at where one of the corners of the paper is curling up away from the wall, then finally gets out of bed and pulls it carefully off the wall and puts it in her desk drawer, sends a text to Finn-  _ do you think he meant as friends or something? I think Poe lied to you I don’t think he likes me _ .

Ben’s riding the wave of his success all weekend, until Monday morning Poe’s boyfriend corners him in the cafeteria before the first tardy bell rings.

“Listen,” Finn says, sounding somehow both diplomatic and incredibly frustrated, “I may not like you that much, but Poe does, and Rey really,  _ really _ does, and I trust Poe when he says you like Rey too, so I feel like you should know that she’s halfway heartbroken over you right now because of some jackass comment one of her housemates made about you not putting effort into asking her to prom.”

Ben just gapes at him for a long moment. “I was trying to be cool, Poe said all my other ideas were sappy and excessive.”

Finn makes a face. “Damn, if  _ Poe _ was saying that I don’t want to know anything about your other ideas.” He shakes his head. “Anyway. Get this sorted out. Talk to her like a  _ person _ and don’t try to be cool because obviously you’re not good at it.” He turns on his heel and walks away, feeling incredibly badass and wishing there were some appropriate background music. He starts humming some once he’s out of earshot.

Rey can’t even look at Ben all day, too full of that sick sense of uncertainty and shame. She’d been so  _ excited _ , thinking he liked her back, and somehow having the whole weekend to work herself into a funk over one stupid comment just made everything worse. Maybe Finn’s right, maybe she needs to tone down the melodrama. He’s just a boy.

But then she’s leaving their shared class and she hears, “Rey, wait up,” and there are those damn butterflies again and ‘just a boy’ seems ridiculous but she still feels squirmy and embarrassed, unsure if she misinterpreted everything, terrified of the rejection she’s sure is coming. “Can we, um, talk?” he asks, rubbing the back of his neck and not meeting her eyes, looking so awkward it almost hurts to watch.

“Yeah, sure, what’s up?” she replies, going for casual, probably missing by miles.

He tugs her out of the crowded main hallway into a more deserted corridor and pulls some notecards out of his back pocket, starts fiddling nervously with them. “So Finn talked to me this morning, and it made me realize that the way I asked you to prom the other day was- shitty. And inadequate. Because I  _ really _ like you, and that didn’t show it, at  _ all _ , and you deserve way better, but I didn’t have proper time to come up with something good enough, so-”

If he’d been looking at her instead of nervously avoiding her eyes, he would have seen the bright smile spreading across her face, and he might have been more prepared when she interrupted him by tugging him down into a kiss. As it is, he lets out a surprised  _ mmf!  _ and knocks his teeth against hers and generally makes a fool of himself, and he’s almost shaking with giddy nerves when he pulls back, hands gentle on her shoulders, grinning like a moron.

“Can we try that again?” he asks.

The second time is way better.


	3. 20. A confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidfic? Kidfic. I haven't written kidfic yet.

Kylo’s the one who always gets up in the middle of the night. They’re both incredibly light sleepers, a side effect of the war and hard lives and, in the specific case of their daughter, her generous Force presence even as an infant. So they both wake, but without fail it’s Kylo who kisses Rey on the forehead or the cheek and tells her to go back to sleep, he’ll take care of it. She’s too exhausted and grateful to argue, so she just rolls over and goes back to sleep. Besides, she knows he loves it, loves being able to take what he can off her shoulders, loves being the one to soothe Breha back to sleep, loves the feeling that he who destroyed so much and walked so long in shadows can be gentle and loved and  _ good _ .

Rey remembers the day their daughter was born, how he was almost shaking with something like joy and fear and wonder all at once, how tiny she looked in his broad hands. He asked his mother, later, whether he was ever that small, and there’s more to the question than what he says, because he’s seeing through their eyes now, years and years ago when he was just a babe in arms, and he’s wondering if they looked at him, too, and saw nothing but future, nothing but possibility, nothing but bright uncertainty. He can’t remember a time when it didn’t feel as if his destiny was already laid out for him, a boy locked in the footprints of giants, infinitely higher expectations with every step and nothing but failure and bitter disappointment behind him.

He tells Rey later that he understands, now, why Han Solo walked out onto that bridge not knowing whether he’d walk back off. He tells Rey he’d have done the same, without a second’s hesitation, if that was Breha out there, lost and angry and so afraid.

Rey never had a family, nothing more than fuzzy, dreamlike memories, the vague recollections of a child too young to know how to etch things into her heart for forever. She remembers a lot of nights lying awake, when she was older, wondering what she’d even do when her family came back for her-  _ when _ they came back, always  _ when _ , always planning for an inevitable future, always warding off the crushing despair of loneliness with that thin shield of  _ when _ , because  _ if _ wasn’t enough to keep away the empty ache that threatened her heart, worse than hunger, worse than thirst, worse than the cold stillness of nights on the dunes without even the wind in the shifting sands to keep her company, whenever she thought about the possibility that maybe this was all there was for her, a half-scraped existence in the hollow shell of a long-dead weapon, that she would die here alone and unloved and forgotten, just another dune blown steadily past the horizon, her memory swallowed by the ephemeral desert sands.

Those were the questions. What would she do? Who would they be? How would she fit in? She would construct a hundred different families in her head- a father with a broad, kind smile and a soft voice and big hands rough from building things, a mother with long, nimble fingers that would weave deftly through her hair and eyes that were bright and blue- no, grey- no, green, or maybe hazel, like she’d been told hers were. Or maybe her father was someone small and quick and tough like her, and her mother was tall and fierce, or maybe one of them was bookish and clever, or maybe one was wise and thoughtful, or maybe one was a skillful storyteller, or maybe one was a mechanic like her, or maybe this or maybe that or maybe a hundred other things. She built infinite different families in her head, but she was always  _ certain _ that they would come back for her and they would love her, unconditionally.

They didn’t, and for all that she loves her family, the family she made all on her own, there’s still a hole in her heart with raw, frayed edges where the family that left her is supposed to be.

One night when Breha is two weeks old, she wakes up crying and every time Kylo calms her, she starts up again as soon as he tries to put her back in her cradle, so Rey reaches out through the Force and tells him to just give up and come back to bed with her. She’s growing fast, but she’s still heartbreakingly small in her father’s hands, and something in Rey’s chest twists remembering all his trepidation years ago, the first time they kissed, the first time he touched her, so worried those hands didn’t know how to do anything but hurt, and now here he is holding their baby like he’s not afraid of himself anymore. It feels like a long way from loneliness on Jakku and lightsaber fights in the snow.

He settles Breha carefully on the bed next to Rey and she reaches out to wind her fingers through the baby’s spare, soft tufts of black hair. Kylo crawls into bed with a sigh, watching Rey and Breha with so much fond warmth in his eyes Rey’s tempted to hide her face.

“Thank the Force, I think she’s going to stay asleep,” she murmurs instead, smiling over at him.

“Don’t jinx it,” he replies, watching Breha shift and snuffle in her sleep.

“Please, you practically  _ enjoy _ getting up in the middle of the night for her.”

“I do,” he says, all midnight honesty. “Sometimes when I wake up I don’t… I’m not sure whether I dreamed everything, all this, because it’s just- too good for me, too good to be true. But when the first thing I hear is her crying, I know it’s real.” Rey lays her hand gently on his face, carding through as much of his hair as she can reach, caressing his jaw. He catches her hand and turns to press a kiss into her palm.

“Are you ever worried we’re not going to be good parents?” she whispers, and she’s mostly talking about herself, about not knowing what a mother’s love feels like, about not understanding the first thing about having a real family, but his hand tightens around hers and she can tell that he feels it too, that creeping fear of lonely children who only know they never want their own to feel like they did and have no idea how.

“All the time,” he says, running his thumb across her knuckles. “I want so badly to just… for her to….” He can’t quite put words to it, but she understands. All they want is better than they had, and it’s not a lot, it’s not wisdom or certainty, but it’s hope and it’s determination and it’s enough.

“We’re gonna be fine,” she says, smiling at him and bringing their joined hands to rest on the pillow above where their daughter sleeps, all future and no tragedy, everything they could once have been, the still-night wish for a better tomorrow.

“I hope so.”


	4. 15. A goodnight kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More kidfic! I do not know why this one got so angsty and un-cute at the end. War is hell?

“Nope, no, no more running around, it is very past your bedtime and your mother will  _ kill _ me if she gets back and I’ve let you become some sort of nocturnal heathen children.” Kylo grabs the unruly five-year-old around the waist and swings him up over his shoulder easily, ignoring the laughing shrieks of protest. He dumps his son unceremoniously into his bed and tugs the blankets up over him, pointing an accusatory finger down at the boy. “Now stay there, Ikah. Go to sleep.” He bends down to drop a kiss onto Ikah’s forehead and then moves across the room to where Breha, ever the angel, is sitting quietly in her bed with a datapad. He taps the top of her datapad and she turns it off and sets it on the nightstand, settling under her blankets. He leans over and kisses her on the head as well. “Thank you for being good, Breha. Good night.”

“Wait, dad, tell us a story?” Breha says, looking up at him hopefully.

“I second this motion!” crows Ikah from the other side of the room, eager for any excuse to not go to sleep. That’s his favorite phrase lately. Kylo has no idea where he picked it up. Probably Leia, he remembers learning too much about politics at too young an age as well.

Kylo grimaces at the clock on the wall and sighs. “Fine, what story?”

“How did you and Mom meet?” Breha asks, and it takes all of Kylo’s control to keep his face neutral. “You’ve never told us.”

Kylo doesn’t say anything for a while, because how do you make  _ I held her hostage and forcibly interrogated her, then we had multiple duels to the death while fighting on opposite sides of a war and she almost killed me as many times as I almost killed her _ kid-friendly? Normally he’d panic and get Rey to talk to them about it, because her unrelenting positivity has a way of putting a much nicer spin on anything, but she’s currently about three thousand star systems away helping track down a bounty hunter for information, so he can’t exactly foist the conversation onto her this time.

“Are you gonna tell us or not?” Ikah asks, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at his father.

Kylo sits on the end of Breha’s bed with another sigh. “What do you guys know about the war with the First Order?”

“It lasted eight years and ended with the death of Supreme Leader Snoke-” Kylo holds back a shiver at the name “-and the dissolution of the First Order and establishment of the Second New Galactic Republic.” Breha recites it probably verbatim from her history text, and Kylo almost wants to laugh- she’s only seven, of course it seems like ancient history to her, just words on a datapad, and it’s almost surreal to hear his living hell, the backdrop of so many of his nightmares, summed up so neatly, clean and simple and easy to understand in hindsight with none of the messiness of war as it’s lived. “Significant events included the destruction of the Hosnian system, the destruction of Starkiller-”

“That’s enough,” Kylo interrupts, perhaps a little too sharply. He smiles at her to make up for it. “You know your facts, kid.” She puffs up with pride, beaming. “All right, well, you know your mom and I fought in the war, right?” Breha darts her eyes away from him, almost guilty, but Ikah gasps, jaw dropping. “Well, we did.”

“Was it  _ awesome _ ?” Ikah asks, eyes glinting.

“No,” Kylo says, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. “It was not. War is never awesome, Ikah.” The boy grimaces, abashed. “We were enemies,” he continues, carefully, and both children just stare at him, wide-eyed.

“You fought  _ each other _ ?” Breha breathes, sounding dismayed. “But- you’re- you  _ love _ each other, Dad!”

“They didn’t  _ then _ , stupid, they didn’t even know each other,” Ikah scoffs, crossing his arms.

“Don’t call your sister stupid.”

“Sorry, Breha.”

“Good. Yeah, we fought each other. A lot. With lightsabers.” Ikah’s eyes sparkle again and Kylo tries not to grin. “It was a little awesome. Mostly your mom. The first time we fought, she’d never even held a lightsaber before, and she kicked my a- butt.”

“That sounds like Mom,” Ikah says, proud. “She’s badass.”

Kylo frowns at him. “You’re right, but you’re not allowed to use that word for at least five more years, okay?”

“So if you were enemies, how did you end up… you know, not being enemies anymore?” Breha asks.

“I realized I was making really, really bad choices, and I stopped making bad choices, and I joined your mom’s side of the war, and she still kind of wanted to kill me, but she got over it eventually. I hope. Marrying me is kind of a long con, but you two  _ are _ driving me to an early grave, so it could go either way, honestly.”

Breha rolls her eyes. “Dad, you’re not funny.”

“You’ll appreciate me someday,” he says, ruffling her hair. “It’s really bedtime, now, okay? You can ask your mom for the rest of the story when she gets back, she’ll tell it better anyway.”

“Night, Dad,” they chorus, as he waves the lights off with the Force and closes the door behind him.

Back in his own room, he comms Rey and crosses his fingers, hoping the signal can reach the  _ Falcon _ , wherever it is. She picks up, and he sighs in relief when the holo pops up. “How’s the hunt for the Mandalorian?” Kylo asks, by way of greeting.

Rey groans. “Don’t ask, it’s a disaster, I’m almost ready to just hire a bounty hunter to hunt the bounty hunter. How are the kids? Troublesome?”

“Just Ikah. You know how he is.”

Rey narrows her eyes. “What happened? You look-”

“They asked me about the war,” he says, quiet, and Rey’s face goes somber in response. “Well, not the war specifically, but they asked me how we met, so.”

She snorts. “What’d you tell them? ‘I kidnapped your mother and then tried to kill her multiple times’?”

“I left out the kidnapping. They don’t need to know about that.”

“Are you all right, though?” Talking about the war is one of the things they both avoid with all the determination they have. It already haunts them in nightmares and daytime, backfiring speeders that sound almost like explosions and the word ‘Ren,’ graffiti on their house and death threats on the holonet, why let it into more of their lives than it’s already invaded?

“I’m fine. Did you know they talk about Snoke in Breha’s history text?” Kylo manages not to choke on the name, and he considers it a victory.

“I didn’t.”

“We should probably read that part of the text. See who else they’re teaching her.” He tries his hardest to keep his voice steady, and he’s not quite sure he manages it, but hearing Snoke’s name from his daughter’s voice is the beginning of some of his worst nightmares.

Rey’s quiet and sad in her response. “Even if they talk about Kylo Ren-” this time he doesn’t suppress his flinch- “she probably doesn’t realize. We’ll just… we’ll figure out how to talk to them about it, okay?”

Kylo smiles wearily at her. “We’ll figure it out.”

When they hang up a little bit later, Kylo opens up his own datapad and finds Breha’s modern history school text in the archive. He reads the chapter on the First Order war over and over again, hoping that maybe if he looks at the words enough times then “Kylo Ren, a brutal enforcer of Supreme Leader Snoke and the leader of the infamous and widely feared Knights of Ren, was responsible for countless deaths during the war, despite his lack of definite standing within the First Order. Although his shift in loyalties was a major factor in the eventual victory of the Resistance, many during and after the war were critical and vocally adverse to the clemency afforded him by the Resistance and the Second New Republic Senate, accusing General Leia Organa of nepotism and calling for his execution” will lose its meaning to him, and stop feeling like a stab in the gut. Instead it just sits behind his eyes whenever he closes them, the sound of Snoke in his ear and the words ‘brutal enforcer’ and ‘countless deaths’ burning in his chest and filling him up with something acrid and terrible.

He doesn’t sleep that night.


	5. 16. A doomed kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw for blood

When you repeat a word often enough, it becomes meaningless- just sound, the movement of tongue and lips and air, devoid of significance. Kylo didn’t know before, but apparently the same thing happens with blood when there’s enough of it, because he has his hands pressed against the gaping wound in her stomach, trying to staunch the flow somehow, and at some point he passed the point of  _ oh no oh no so much blood _ and into a place where it felt like he’d always been crimson halfway up his arms, like it wasn’t her life pooling gently around his knees but rather something more like sand in the desert- so ubiquitous it wasn’t even worth recognizing.

(It happened so fast- one minute reveling in victory, a celebratory kiss, hope and passion and lips pressed just a little too hard together but neither of them caring, then the next minute she was pushing him aside- because she’s always been better than him, hasn’t she? Always stronger and quicker and more sensitive, so she’d be the one to sense it- and he’s hearing the sound of the blaster but it’s too late because she’s pressing a hand to her middle and it’s coming away red, and it’s a split-second action to reach out with the Force and snap the bastard’s neck but it’s two split seconds too late because she’s already on the ground.)

“You’re gonna be fine,” he says, and they both know he’s talking more to himself. “You’re gonna be just fine, love.”

“This is just rotten timing,” she says, managing a grin. “All that war and for me to bite it right after we beat Snoke.”

“Except you’re not going to- don’t talk like that, Rey, please, I can’t….” He can’t put words to it he could spend hours trying but his tongue would always freeze and tangle and refuse to cooperate, he knows. Because a universe where he lives without her is incomprehensible even to a heart as accustomed to agony as his.

“Look at it this way,” she says, pausing to cough, and he can  _ feel _ the way her wound worsens a little with the motion and her face goes tense in agony for a moment before she continues, “I’m avoiding reconstruction. You know that’s the really rubbish part of all this, and I get to skip it.”

“No, you don’t,” he says, managing to frown at her. “You’re coming back with me and we’re both going to suffer through reconstruction together, and endless Senate meetings, and helping Luke restart the Jedi order again, and visiting every beautiful place in the galaxy you haven’t been, and sleeping in till noon, and- and the  _ future _ , Rey, you and me and the future, okay?”

“That sounds nice,” she sighs, already weaker, and he practically whimpers. She reaches up with one feeble, shaking hand to cup his cheek, and he laces his fingers with hers and holds her there, oblivious of the bloody handprint on his face. “Tell me more?”

“It’s going to be so  _ good _ , love. Anywhere in the galaxy you want to go, more green and blue than you’ve ever seen and colors you haven’t even imagined. And I’ll teach you how to cook- real food, not rations.”

“We both know you can’t cook.”

“Okay, Poe will teach both of us how to cook. And- and we won’t be in danger anymore, imagine that, huh? It’ll be peaceful. No more war, and no more loneliness, and nothing to be afraid of, anymore, just- you and me, and you’ll be happy, love, I’ll move the damn stars, you’ll be  _ so _ happy, and it’ll be perfect, you just have to stay with me, okay? Just stay with me.” Her eyelids are fluttering, but there’s a smile on her face, and he knows he must look half-mad with desperation, because he can feel how tightly he’s gripping her hand, and he can hear the barely-repressed sobs in his voice, and he can see where his hand is walking the line between soothing and deranged as it caresses her cheek, leaving a streak of red under her eye like warpaint, and he wants to erase the comparison from his head because it shouldn’t  _ be _ like this, she shouldn’t be dying a warrior, a martyr, she should be dying gently, she doesn’t  _ deserve _ this she deserves the future he’s painting for them, recklessly, blindly, hopefully-

“Do all that for me, okay?” she murmurs, hardly moving. “Everything nice. Be happy.”

“No, not without you,” he grits out, pressing his forehead against hers, trying to give her whatever it is that will prevent this cosmic mistake, his strength, his life, anything, everything,  _ something _ . “Keep fighting, Rey, keep fighting, stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.”

And he keeps repeating it, like a prayer, whispering his plea to the frantic tattoo of his heartbeat as it races and races trying to make up for the slowing of hers. Over and over,  _ stay with me _ , movement of tongue and lips and air until its meaning slips away, in his mind another frenzied supplication to whatever powers could grant it,  _ take me instead take me instead oh stars oh stars take me instead _ , because in what world can he exist without her? Either both of them, or her alone, or neither of them- Kylo by himself is not an option, Kylo by himself is broken beyond recognition, Kylo by himself is emptiness corporeal, Kylo by himself is speech without words, meaningless purposeless useless-

He feels the moment her hand goes limp in his, her light slips from the world, her last breath wisps out with a soft sigh, and he feels the moment he goes with her.

Kylo lifts his face to the sky and wails, feral and agonized, unfathomable grief and her bloody handprint on his face, a man unmade.


	6. 5. A nap

Kylo makes it his business to know about Rey. At first, during the war, when he had still been her enemy- a concept that makes him almost want to laugh, now, so long after the fact- that meant understanding her strengths and weaknesses, how he could keep himself alive the next time they went toe-to-toe, anything that would give him an edge in their endless struggle. But they’d stopped being enemies a long time ago, and even before that the war had been over, and even before  _ that _ he’d figured out he wasn’t willing to die for Snoke and had joined the Resistance.

Now, knowing about her means something different. It means knowing how she wakes with the sun and will eat anything and rarely wears a raincoat, preferring to let it soak her through to the bone. It means understanding her and all she’s been through and her loneliness and doubt- though he knew about that even during the war, kept it tucked away in a secret corner of his heart even as they fought, the feeling of a kindred spirit,  _ so lonely, so afraid, so desperate for belonging, just like me. _

It means knowing how she craves the comfort of human contact, how a gentle touch was like a drug to her even now after years with her ragtag little found family. It never ceases to thrill him how she melts under his touch, like his skin on hers is cool water in the desert, warmth in the middle of winter. He knows he’s almost as weak for it, too, remembers the time when just her hand helping him up after she knocked him on his ass was fucking  _ electric _ . 

“Stop thinking so hard,” Rey murmurs from where her head is pillowed on his chest, half-asleep. “You’re causing a disturbance in the Force.”

“Sorry,” he says, kissing the crown of her head. “Go back to sleep.”

“Well I’m awake now,” she says, stifling a yawn and propping herself up on her elbow to look at him. “What are you thinking about?”

Her hair’s sticking up funny on the side and her eyes are half-lidded and sleepy. He can’t help the smile that takes over his face at the sight of her, and he threads his fingers into her hair. She sighs and leans into it, like he knew she would, and it makes all his mistakes worth it that they brought him here.

“Nothing of galactic consequence,” he says, pulling her back into him. She presses a kiss to the bare skin of his neck, her hand splayed out on his chest, her fingers just touching the edge of his cybernetic shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

She hums in agreement, already dozing off from the warmth of his skin, his hand in her hair, his fingertips tracing patterns on her lower back. “You’ll tell me in the morning if it’s important, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

He’s pretty sure she’s already asleep but he says “I love you” anyway.


	7. 25. "We can never be together" kiss

He finds her in the heat of battle, as he always does. When she activates her saber, he extinguishes his, as he always does.

“I’m not going to fight you,” he says, taking off his mask, as he always does. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

That’s new.

Rey hesitates before responding, because he’s changed the pattern. “Why do you care?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Kylo says, scowling. “You know we’re not enemies.”

“Speak for yourself,” she snaps, then softens, deactivating her lightsaber and holstering it. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” he says, stepping closer. She doesn’t back away. “You’re right.” He’s within arm’s length now. “Despite everything between us,” and she feels a rush of heat to her face and to her stomach as their minds go to the same place, that enigmatic, liminal space in the Force where all that exists is the two of them outside everything, the electric energy between them, soft kisses and wandering hands and a reluctantly cautious sort of openness, the beginning of what could be called love emerging from the ashes of hate killed by understanding, “we are enemies.” His gloved hand rests on her cheek, the leather cool and gentle against her skin, and she leans into it. “But we don’t have to be,” he whispers, and she knows what comes next, but she waits a long moment before pulling away from him anyway.

“I’m not joining you, Kylo, you know it won’t work.” She wishes there wasn’t heartbreak in her voice, wishes she didn’t have the capacity to  _ be _ heartbroken over him, wishes she didn’t see her pain reflected in his eyes, their two lonely hearts still struggling towards a kindred spirit despite their loyalties. She places a hand gently on the back of his neck, pulling him down for a kiss, sad and sweet and far too short.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, when they break apart.

“So am I,” he breathes, unwilling to move away from her. The battle rages in the distance, and they stand there suspended in the moment, worlds away, wishing desperately it could last forever.


	8. 11. "I almost lost you" kiss

Kylo doesn’t usually sleep much, but he doesn’t sleep at all that night, sitting by Rey’s bedside, waiting for her to wake up. He just holds her hand in his, his head propped up on his arms, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She’s  _ alive _ , but the doctors had only responded with a helpless shrug when asked if-  _ when _ she’d be awake.

He hates feeling so  _ helpless _ \- for all his power and skill he can’t do anything, can’t heal her, can’t wake her.

Couldn’t protect her.

His mind goes around and around in circles, replaying the battle hundreds of times, trying to pinpoint all his mistakes, all the ways he could have saved her, every moment a different move could have kept her out of the medbay, even if it meant putting him in it. He thinks himself sore between analyzing his failure and berating himself for it and by the time dawn breaks through the window he’s ready to pull his hair out at the roots and if it were years ago and he was still on Starkiller he’d probably have destroyed a lot of very important equipment by now.

Kylo isn’t very good at patience.

He’s so lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice she’s awake until she squeezes his hand, her fingers weak and slow, and then he’s on his feet immediately, searching her face, tucking her hair away from her forehead with gentle fingers, careful not to touch the bandages on her face and head.

“How do you feel?” he asks, soft and worried.

“Like I got stabbed,” she murmurs, hoarse. “I did get stabbed, right?”

He knows she’s trying to have good humor, but he still feels a dark ache in his chest thinking about it, and he can’t bring himself to laugh. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hand tightening on hers. “I’m sorry, I should have-”

“No, Kylo, it’s not your fault.”

“But I should have  _ protected  _ you, I-” his voice breaks, and he has to close his eyes to compose himself. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

“You can’t always save me,” she says, soft, turning her head to kiss his palm. “That’s okay. You don’t have to. I can look after myself.”

“I know,” he sighs, bringing her hand up to his mouth and kissing her knuckles. “I was so worried, Rey, they weren’t sure you were going to wake up.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty tough,” she says with her bright grin, and he starts to feel a little less wrecked. She’s going to be fine.

“Of course you are.” He leans down and kisses her. It’s warm and careful, relief and affection. “Tough as nails.”


	9. 24. Returned from the dead kiss

All the intelligence they have confirms it- his command shuttle was shot down over Zeitooine, no survivors. Rey grieved quietly, just as she’d done everything quietly when it came to him. She cried alone in her bunk at night, in the time she used to spend with him in their dreamworld within the Force, and she’d just started getting to a place where it wouldn’t feel like her soul was collapsing every time she breathed.

So she can’t fathom why he’s standing here, leaning on her X-wing in tight pants and a white shirt like any smuggler, a black eye faded mostly to yellow, a half-healed cut on his neck, but otherwise none the worse for wear. She just stands there for a long minute, gaping at him, questions upon questions piling up in her throat, but what comes out is, “You cut your hair.”

He grins at her, wide and slow, the way he never smiles for anyone else, and her heart speeds up. “I fake my own death to get to you and that’s all you have to say?” he asks, sarcastic, quirking an eyebrow. “I should just-”

He’s interrupted when she drops her toolbox and runs forward, crashing into him and almost sending him stumbling back into her ship. His arms come up around her, tight and strong and protective, and he buries his nose in her hair, and he’s  _ here _ and he’s  _ real _ and she can feel the warmth of him where her cheek is pressed against his chest and she can smell lingering smoke on his shirt and she presses her fingers into the solid muscles of his back and she’s trying not to cry but it’s not going very well.

She pulls back to look at him, his hold on her loosening enough to give her space, then fists her hands in his collar and pulls him down into a kiss. It’s better than she thought it’d be, his lips soft and yielding, his hands pulling her closer, and she’s grateful for his hold when he nips at her bottom lip and her knees go weak.

“I thought you were dead,” she says after they break apart, more than a little breathless.

“And leave my Rey behind?” he murmurs, kissing her again, sweet and quick. “Not a chance.”


	10. 23. Last kiss

Rey’s usually an early riser, so she’s confused for a moment when she wakes up to Kylo getting out of bed before her. She rolls over and sees him collecting his clothes off the floor where he’d left them the previous night.

“What time is it?” she mumbles, rubbing at her eyes. “Why are you awake?”

He turns to face her, buttoning the wrinkled white shirt he’d had on yesterday. “Early, I have some business offworld. War waits for no man.”

“It’s not even light outside yet,” she says, stifling a yawn.

“I know,” he replies with a grimace she can hear more than see in the gloom of the predawn bunkroom.

“Do you really have to go?” She reaches out towards him and he takes her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm.

“Unfortunately, yes.” He leans over her, one knee on the bed, and kisses her soundly. She probably tastes like sleep, but she runs her fingers through his hair anyway, enjoying the way he relaxes under her touch. He pulls back after a moment, though, and she pouts. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

“Fine, go do your whatever and leave me alone in this cold bed,” she says, dramatic, tugging the blankets up over her shoulder.

He chuckles quietly and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Go back to sleep, I love you.”

“Love you too.” She drifts off to the sound of the door closing behind him.

Rey’s an early riser, so it’s the sun that rouses her from the dream-memory, and she lays there for a single groggy, blissful moment, before reality catches up with her and she almost chokes on the ragged sob that comes out of her, reaching automatically for the pillow that used to be his and pressing her face into it, searching desperately for the scent of him that fades more with every day.

Eventually she manages to compose herself enough to lean up on her elbow and scratch another tally into the notepad on her bedside table, one for every night she’s dreamed of their last morning together. She wonders when it’ll stop being the same as the number of days since he died.

She misses him.


	11. 8. Seductive kiss

Poe must be crazy if he expects her to actually  _ wear _ this. It’s  _ tiny _ , basically just a few scraps of black lace, and it barely covers what needs to be covered, much less what she’s comfortable with. But Poe’s the one with experience, and at the end of the day she trusts him, even that mischievous grin he’d gotten when she’d asked for his help with this particular… mission.

So she takes a deep breath and steps out of the ‘fresher into Kylo’s bedroom, lying down on his bed and draping her robe strategically so it covers, well, more than the underwear does, and she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

By the time she finally hears the door open, she’s sprawled out and half asleep, but the hiss of the hydraulics has her scrambling to prop herself back up and rearrange her clothes, and it’s worth the wait when he freezes in the doorway at the sight of her, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open slightly. She manages to stand and cross the room to him in slow strides without looking like a fool- she hopes- and when she gets to him she reaches around him to close the door, winking up at him. His mouth snaps shut and his hands twitch like he’s trying to keep himself from touching her.

Wordlessly she runs her hand up his arm, barely touching him, relishing the way he shivers when her hand ghosts over the skin of his neck. She tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls him down into a kiss, long and slow and dirty, and when his hands clutch at the back of her robe she thinks he might tear it with how tight his hold is.

Rey breaks away from his mouth and starts kissing her way down his jaw to his neck and he moans as she sucks a bruise into his pulse point. “Not that I’m complaining,” he says, breathless, one of his hands slipping under her robe to tease at the strap of her bra, “but you know you don’t have to do all this to get me to sleep with you, right?” She falters and he pulls back to look at her. “I’m sorry, I just- I do appreciate it, but you don’t seem very comfortable,” she tries not to wince, she thought she’d managed to hide her awkwardness, “and I want  _ you _ , Rey, not fancy underwear.”

“Thank the stars,” she sighs, relieved. “It’s itchy.”

He grins, kissing her again, all teeth and tongues, and her toes curl. “I’m just gonna take it off you anyway,” he murmurs against her skin.

And he does. With his teeth.


	12. 3. Drunk/sloppy kiss

Kylo’s not big on drinking- even now, after years back in the Light, he’s hesitant to trust his self-control sober, so he doesn’t want to risk adding alcohol to the mix. But it’s the end of the  _ war _ . They’ve finally driven the First Order out, captured its leaders, started freeing the Stormtroopers and using the Order’s databases to find their families. They’ll probably be celebrating for weeks- even he can afford to let loose a little bit.

So he abandons his usual position on the sidelines and when Poe slides a shot over towards him he takes it in one dramatic gulp. Poe cheers, clapping him on the back, and it’s all downhill from there, but in the best way.

It’s not that he’s never been  _ drunk _ before, it’s just that he’s never been drunk in a fun context. So everything’s pleasantly blurry when Rey drags him out onto the dance floor through halfhearted protests. The only dances he knows are the ones he learned as a part of his diplomacy and etiquette lessons, and this is definitely not that kind of dance, so he doesn’t really try, mostly just… flails his limbs a little bit. Rey starts laughing at him, and he frowns dramatically at her.

“You look like an electrocuted Gungan,” she giggles. “You  _ really _ can’t dance.”

“I can too,” he says with a scowl. “Just… fancy dances. Step-dances. Rich people dancing. You know?”

“Oh sure,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Well, that’s a challenge if  _ his _ drunk ass has ever heard one.

“I’ll show you.” He grabs her hands and guides one to his shoulder, lacing their fingers together with the other. His free hand finds her waist and he tries not to think about how he can cover the entire distance from her ribs to her hips without stretching his fingers. “Step back with this foot,” he says softly, “then over, then together, then forward, then over, that’s right, you’ve got it. Here, it’s easier if you just-” He tugs her closer, the way you’re supposed to for this dance, so their bodies are flush together, and now he’s certain it’s not just the alcohol making everything warmer. She falters and almost misses a step, then she recovers.

“So you can dance,” she says with a grin, but there’s a twinge of nerves in her voice, like she’s trying to hide it.

“So can you.”  She pulls her eyes away from their feet and they lock gazes for just a moment, but a moment is long enough. Before he can stop himself, he’s moved their joined hands to her face and leaned down to press his lips against hers. It’s not a good kiss, she’s too surprised and he’s too nervous, their mouths aren’t quite matched up and it’s a miracle their teeth don’t knock together. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,” he says, when he pulls away. And then he registers the shock on her face and the way she’s gone stiff in his arms and he drops her hand and pulls away from her as if he’s been burned. “I-I’m sorry,” he stutters, “I shouldn’t have- I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry, I-”

She grabs his face and pulls him down into a kiss, and it’s not quite as clumsy as the first one, but it definitely improves once he relaxes into it and starts kissing her back, one hand in her hair and the other splayed across her back. A loud whoop from one of their friends breaks them apart, and he’s certain he looks dazed as he stares at her for a long moment.

“I have, too,” she says, ducking her head shyly. “Wanted to do that for a while.”

He can’t help it- he kisses her again. “Get a room!” yells Poe off to the side. Kylo flips him off without taking his lips off hers.


	13. 21. A jealous kiss

Rey knows he’s not doing it on purpose. In fact, he’s probably wildly uncomfortable. And it’s not his fault, really- he’s charming, in his clumsy way, and attractive, someone else was bound to notice eventually.

It’s just that it seems like  _ every unattached person in the Resistance _ has noticed.

“I really have no right to be this mad about it!” she says to Finn, lying facedown on his bed. “It’s not like we’re, you know,  _ together _ or anything. It just… every time I see other people all… in his space and giggling and touching his arm and being-  _ cute _ , it just makes me wanna crush things. You know?”

Finn considers. “I can’t empathize with the Kylo Ren part, but I see what you mean in a general sense, yes. Go on.”

She sighs dramatically, rolling over and clutching his pillow to her chest. “I don’t know. Do you think he even notices me?” Finn snorts. “Well, I mean- I know he  _ notices _ me, we literally see each other every day, but I mean… do you think he sees me as, I don’t know….”

“A prospect?” Finn offers dryly.

Rey makes a face. “It sounds so clinical when you put it like that, but yeah.” She sighs again. “It just… sometimes it feels like there’s something  _ there _ , you know? But then other times he’s just- cold, and distant, and closed off.”

Finn shrugs. “You could try just telling him how you feel. It worked for me.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but you were confessing to  _ Poe _ . Poe’s easy. He was mooney-eyed after you for  _ months _ , I’ve literally never seen anyone more obvious.” Finn gives Rey a long look she can’t quite decipher. Finally he just shrugs helplessly at her.

“I mean it’s your choice, but this is Kylo we’re talking about, so you can either keep watching him not realize people are flirting with him or you can do something about it.”

“I like that first option,” she says, sitting up. “It’s easy.”

Finn sighs. “Next time you talk to Poe about your boy problems, okay? He’s better at this than me.”

Nothing comes of the conversation for another couple of weeks. But then Rey has the day from hell, waking up too early to a blaring alarm, missing meals for a firefight in the middle of nowhere, and losing one of the S-foils on her starfighter and being grounded until it’s fixed, so she just wants to go to the training room to beat out her frustration on a punching bag or maybe Kylo, only to turn a corner on her way there and watch him be  _ flirted with _ in front of her  _ eyes _ . So she marches up to the pair of them, makes a curt and insincere apology to the pilot he’s talking to, grabs him by the arm and drags him off.

“Let’s spar,” she says with a grin that’s probably entirely more menacing than she intends it to be, throwing one of the wooden practice sabers to him and stripping down to her breast-wrap and pants.

She’s kind of… vicious, as they’re fighting, and Kylo looks more than a little panicked as he parries her first few blows, and then he seems to get his feet under him and gives back as good as he gets. They cover the floor of the sparring arena probably a dozen times, back and forth, practically splintering the wooden sabers with the force of their blows. It feels a lot like when he first switched sides, when she still hated him. She got  _ really  _ good at kicking his ass in those first weeks.

He knocks her saber aside and sweeps her feet from under her. “Why are you so angry?” he pants, pointing the tip of his wooden sword at her throat. She scowls and grabs it, pulling it to the side and leaping to her feet.

“Because-” she swings at him and he blocks it easily, “I’m-” she swings again, he blocks again, “damn-” she swings, he blocks, “sick of-” again “watching-” and again “the whole-” and again “ _ fucking! _ ” her saber splinters a little, “base-” he catches her practice saber in the palm of his hand “flirt with you!” She shoves at his shoulders and he doesn’t even move, which just makes her madder. “And you don’t even seem to notice! Or care!”

He frowns at her for a long second, both of them standing there sweating and panting, her just inches away from his face, him backed up against the wall.

“Rey, are you jealous?”

“Yes!” she practically yells. “Yes I’m  _ jealous _ ! They don’t- and  _ you  _ don’t- and I just want to-” With a frustrated noise, she grabs him by the sweat-soaked straps of his tank top and yanks him down into a kiss. It isn’t a nice kiss, she’s too angry and impassioned and inexperienced, practically growling into his mouth. After a surprised second, he starts kissing her back, and that’s when it improves significantly, because he’s  _ good _ at this, his mouth hot and insistent against hers, one of his hands tugging at her hair, the other pulling her even closer, their bodies flush against each other, breathing just as raggedly as if they were still fighting. She hitches one leg up around his waist and he turns them around so she’s the one pressed against the wall, her legs wrapped around him, his hands on her ass the only thing really holding her up.

He breaks away from her mouth and starts kissing his way down her neck. “You’ve got nothing to be jealous of,” he says in between kisses. “I don’t care about any of them. Just you. I just want you.”


	14. 43. "I think I'm in love"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should write more mom!Leia this was fun

Leia finds her son in the cockpit of the Falcon, staring out over the bustling hangar of the Resistance. Now that the ship is functionally obsolete, finally having caved to its own age, they mostly keep it around as a historical relic and moral booster. Well, that and Rey’s unflagging determination to make it work again someday. It warms her heart that the old hunk of garbage still has someone to love it the way Han did. The universe wouldn’t be right otherwise.

“Stop thinking so hard, you’re causing a disturbance in the Force,” she says with a smile as she sits down in the copilots seat. The look he gives her is surprised, worried, apologetic, and she waves it away. “I was joking, sweetheart.” His shoulders slump a little and she feels the familiar twinge in her chest whenever she sees how little she knows him. “Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing,” he says. “Really.” She raises an eyebrow at him and he ducks his head, grimacing. “Okay it’s not  _ nothing _ , it’s just… complicated. And- ridiculous, honestly.”

“That’s exactly the kind of problem you need to talk about,” she says, leaning forward to rest her hand on his knee. He’s finally stopped flinching at her touch. They’re getting somewhere. He just keeps staring out of the viewport, and she can practically hear him collecting his thoughts. Ben was never fond of speaking without thinking- he’s so careful with his words, always saying exactly what he means, nothing more. He has a politician’s tact, a very diplomatic tendency to play his cards close to his chest- he gets that from her.

The only time she sees that careful, collected verbosity falter is around Rey. He babbles and stutters and it’s all Leia can do not to tease him about it. She would, but- she doesn’t think they’re there yet. Maybe in a while. She follows his gaze out to the hangar and sees Rey and Finn standing together, laughing and trying to catch berries in their mouths.

“I think I’m in love,” Ben says finally.

All Leia can do is smile softly at him. “I could have told you that, sweetheart.”

He blushes and ducks his head, looking away from her. “It’s… irrelevant. She’s too…,” he trails off, leaving Leia to fill in the blanks he’s leaving. Too brave, too bright, too  _ good _ . It still breaks Leia’s heart to know how deeply Ben is still mired in his own despair, how he can only see where he once was instead of how far he’s come from then. But he has to learn that on his own, she can’t force him, even if she wishes she could. All she can do is all she’s ever done- her best.

So she smiles at her son as he stares out with undisguised longing and wonder, and she says, “The universe is a strange place, Benny, I wouldn’t say anything’s impossible.”

“Yeah,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “I think you’re probably right, Mom.”


	15. 18. Holding hands

Rey isn’t good at cities. They’re too big, too bustling, there’s too much  _ happening _ at any given moment. It seems sometimes as if the whole universe is alive in the same street as her and it drives her nuts- not only because of all the  _ sensations _ , the roaring pace of the city, the teeming crowds, the feeling that she’ll be swept away at any moment, but also the Force, which anywhere else is like a dull, living hum running through her and everything else, is more like an electric current in the city.

The first time she goes to Coruscant, she has a panic attack in the spaceport and has to stay huddled under the blankets in the Falcon’s bunkroom with a pillow over her head and the lights off while Luke takes care of their business on the planet. She does everything she can to get out of going back to Coruscant. So this mission, in her eyes, is officially the worst possible mission she could have ever been assigned- not only is she going to Coruscant, but she’s going there  _ alone _ with  _ him _ .

Kylo Ren defected to the Resistance a few weeks after Starkiller, and Rey had, fortunately, been busy training with Luke, so she’d managed to avoid having to be anywhere near the evil bastard for almost a year. Unfortunately, he’d used that year to worm his way into the good graces of her friends, and now she has to deal with Finn and Poe telling her he’s not really a bad guy, that he’s genuine in his remorse, that her suspicions about his loyalty are baseless. She doesn’t believe it, and she’s been vocal in her contempt, and after a few days of trying to get her alone so he could, ostensibly, apologize (but probably just kill her on Snoke’s orders), he gave up and decided to give her space instead. She still catches him shooting her sad, longing glances when she isn’t looking, and she always responds with a withering glare.

Now, they’re piloting the Falcon in for a landing in the busy spacelanes of the city-planet, stuck together on a mission because they were the only two free (Rey thinks it was on purpose, but she won’t say that to anyone).

“You seem a little anxious,” says Kylo cautiously, glancing at her hands white-knuckling the controls.

“I’m not,” she snaps in response, and they both grimace. Rey sighs heavily, focusing on bringing the Falcon into the spaceport.

When it sets down and they’ve finished shutdown protocols, Rey can’t bring herself to get out of the pilot’s seat. Her palms sweat and her heart pounds and all she can think about is the dizzying, overwhelming terror the last time she was here. It’s been a while, and she’s better at handling crowds, she really is, but- this is  _ Coruscant _ . This is  _ the _ big crowd.

She doesn’t notice Kylo is watching her until he speaks, soft and low and hesitant, like almost everything he does these days. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but- I’d like to help. If I can.”

Rey’s eyes flicker to him, tense and earnest in the co-pilot’s seat, waiting for her response. She rubs her hands on the thick material of her spacer’s pants and, before she can second-guess herself, says, “Last time I was here I… freaked out. It’s too- everything, there’s too much  _ happening _ , in the Force and in the world, it’s so busy and everything’s just so- and I can’t really handle it, and I haven’t been back in a while, and I’m scared I’m going to lose it again as soon as I step out of the Falcon.”

Kylo sighs, as if relieved. “That’s- we can deal with that. The trick to the Force noise is to just pick one thing and keep your focus on that, tune out everything else. With practice you can learn to block it all without having an anchor, but- it’s easiest to just pick one thing, one life-form, and fixate on that.”

“And the- everything else?”

Kylo grimaces. “That’s just a matter of getting used to it. You’re tougher than you think, you can handle it. But if you want to stay on the ship, that’s fine, I can handle the mission.”

Rey glowers at him. “No way, I’m going with you even if you have to drag my hyperventilating corpse through the streets.”

He snorts, and then he’s laughing, and she doesn’t think she’s ever heard him laugh before, but it’s such a good sound, loud and honest and ungraceful, and she finds herself giggling along after a moment. It’s easy, then, to just latch onto his presence in the Force, and it’s been a while since she’s really felt him like that- probably not since Starkiller, if she’s being honest- and he’s… different. A lot less ragged around the edges, a lot more optimistic. He’s finding himself, slowly, and she thinks, yeah, maybe it’s time to let go of her grudge.

When they step down off the gangplank into the spaceport, Rey falters for a moment at the steady, rapid pulse of life around her, what she can see in the street a ways away, and tries to tamp down the rising anxiety in her chest. She feels something nudging at her hand, and looks down to see Kylo reaching for her fingers, looks up to see him watching her, uncertain but concerned, tall and broad and solid next to her.

Rey grabs his hand, twining their fingers together and grips it as tight as she dares. She grins at him and he smiles back and her fear retreats, defeated.


	16. 15. Hope we don't get caught kiss

It’s not that Rey doesn’t  _ trust _ Kylo- quite the opposite, actually. Because she can sense his earnest honesty through the Force, she was actually the first to take his side when he defected to the Resistance, and though she still didn’t  _ like _ him for a long time, she was at least willing to acknowledge that he was really, truly reformed. So the ardent desire to be doing this particular mission with  _ literally anyone else _ other than him doesn’t stem from mistrust or even dislike.

No, she’s wishing it was Finn or Poe or Jessika or anyone else by her side right now because she likes Kylo entirely  _ too _ much, in ways that are foreign and fluttery and frightening. She has a  _ crush _ . It’s horrifying.

It really doesn’t help that this is her first time doing an espionage mission of this kind, infiltrating a powerful politician’s palace to get vital intel for the Resistance. It would be one thing if it were, say, cat burgling, which she’s done before and can absolutely handle. But, no, she had to get stuck doing the kind of infiltration where she has to dress up in a fancy gown and headdress and pretend to be someone sophisticated and beautiful and important, with  _ Kylo _ of all people.

The worst part is how  _ good _ he is at it- years of childhood etiquette lessons and having to play the polite, accomplished son to Senator Organa finally paying off, he tells her. There’s just something about watching him smile and charm and be completely different from his usual self that has her chest all twisted up in knots. It really doesn’t help that she’s a nervous, awkward wreck and he’s being as gently helpful as he can, murmuring quiet reassurances in her ear, his hand warm and solid on the skin exposed by her backless dress. He thinks she’s a nervous wreck because of the mission, and she fully intends to let him keep thinking that.

“So the guard should be changing in two minutes,” he murmurs into her ear, “which is our opportunity to sneak past them to the office.”

She grins and giggles to cover the exchange. “Of course.”

They start to make their way across the floor towards the side door that leads into the closed wing of the palace, and as soon as they see the relief security show up they’re through the doors and closing them quickly before anyone can see. Rey immediately slips off her uncomfortable fancy shoes and it’s all business as they creep through the corridors to the control room, where Kylo stands guard while Rey gathers the intel they need.

“Got it,” she says, slipping the datachip into his hand. He hides it in one of his inside pockets and they’re off again, sneaking back towards the party, feeling the thrill of a mission so close to completion.

He grabs her arm suddenly, yanking her to a stop. “Someone’s coming,” he hisses.

“There’s nowhere to hide!” Rey responds, wide-eyed and beginning to panic.

For a beat, she can see him thinking, plans whirling through his mind rapidfire, and then he looks her solemnly in the eye. “Do you trust me?” he asks, and she nods without hesitation.

Then, before she can really register what’s happening, he’s pinned her against the wall, his mouth on hers, his hand on her waist, his fingers working their way into her fancy hairdo. Distantly she hears the clatter of her shoes hitting the floor as she loses her grip on them, and then she wakes up enough to kiss him back, winding her arms over his shoulders. She’s certain she’s not any good at it, and her only coherent thought is one of concern for the fact that she’s probably getting lipstick all over him, the rest of her mind drowned out by a staticky hum of adrenaline and nervousness and terror. Rey manages to get so lost in the kiss that she almost forgets they’re in danger, till-

“Hey!” barks a security guard as he comes around the corner. “You’re not supposed to be here?”

“What?” says Kylo with a sleepy blink, looking utterly dazed, and Rey’s certain not even  _ he’s _ that good of an actor. “O-oh, sorry, we just wanted some priva-”

“Yeah, whatever, get out,” growls the guard, marching over to grab Kylo by the shoulder, Rey following behind almost robotically.

“Sweetheart, your shoes,” says Kylo, grinning at her, and her stomach swoops and soars and she barely remembers to giggle drunkenly as she trips back to retrieve them.

“Oops, sorry,” she says lightly, grabbing them and hurrying back to slot herself under Kylo’s arm. The guard snorts, disgusted, and Rey isn’t sure whether the kiss Kylo drops onto her cheek is for effect or just to antagonize him.

The guard steers them out of the party entirely and as soon as they’re down the street, they drop their benign-drunk act and start towards the spaceport.

“So that was…,” Kylo says, awkward and almost apologetic.

“It was nice,” Rey responds, before she can think, and then flushes bright red. “I-I mean, it was quick thinking, good plan, it-”

“Rey,” he says gently, and she notices they’ve stopped in the middle of the street, and he’s looking down at her with this broad, slow grin that makes her insides do acrobatics, and then his hand is soft under her chin and he’s kissing her again, warm and sweet and everything she could have ever dreamed of.

When they break apart she gathers her wits around her enough to murmur, “We should be getting back to the Falcon.”

He mouths at her jaw, the side of her neck, making her shiver. “Or we could keep doing this.”

“We’ll be in hyperspace for  _ hours _ ,” she practically purrs, running her fingers through his hair, and he pulls away, hovering near her for a long moment before tucking her against his side.

“You make a compelling argument,” he says as they start walking again, and she can’t help but laugh, wrapping her arm around his waist and pressing herself in just a little closer.

Best mission  _ ever. _


	17. 5. Angry kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For roosterteehth on tumblr

“I can’t  _ believe _ you!” she screams, slamming her keys down on the counter.

“Oh,  _ I’m _ the problem?” he snarls, the door closing with a heavy thud behind him. “He was-”

“I know! I know!” She practically tears her earrings out, and finally faces him with fire in her eyes. “But you didn’t have to break his  _ jaw _ .”

Ben throws his jacket onto the couch, crossing his arms. “He deserved-”

“And that’s not the problem anyway!” She crosses the room, practically in his face.

“Then what is it?” he shouts, flinging his arms wide open.

“This is the  _ fifth _ date you’ve ruined this month!” she yells, her face going red. “I’m sick of it! You can’t keep doing this!”

He looks offended. “Doing what? What, exactly, am I doing? Other than saving you from asshole-”

“Acting like- like a jealous boyfriend!” Tears are starting to prick at her eyes, and she clenches her jaw, willing them away. “We slept together  _ once _ , and you didn’t want anything more, so you have no right-”

“ _ I _ didn’t want? Jesus christ, Rey,” he says, incredulous, his voice cracking with emotion, “it was  _ you _ who told me to forget about it!”

“Because you told Poe it was just a one-time thing!” She huffs, a tear slipping down her cheek. “You don’t want me, and that’s  _ fine _ , but you have to let me-”

She hardly has a chance to breathe before he’s crushing his lips against hers, one hand on the back of her neck and the other vicelike around her waist, pulling her into him. The kiss starts out hard and awkward, all force and no finesse, but when the shock wears off she’s kissing him back, her hands on his face. Finally, he pulls back and presses his forehead against hers, breathing shakily.

“I don’t know what you heard me say to Poe, but you’re wrong. I want you, Rey, I want- fuck, I want  _ everything _ with you.” He kisses her again, slower this time, calmer, less like they’re about to die and more like he’s trying to tell her what he can’t with words. “Please.”

Rey’s smiling so wide she thinks her face might split in half, and her heart is beating a mile a minute. “Okay. Yes. Of course.” She swipes at the wetness still on her cheeks. “Just one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Promise you won’t ruin any more of my dates.”

He laughs, kisses her again. “I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


	18. literally bumping into each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For an anon on tumblr  
> This is... less reylo than I intended it to be at the start? But it's the first SW thing I've finished since, like, November, so I figured I'd post it anyway

The last person Rey expected to bump into in the underbelly of Coruscant was Kylo Ren, not least because every spy and report and shred of intelligence from the First Order confirmed that he’d died on Starkiller. And yet, as she’s sprinting away from the Hutt gang bruisers chasing after her, bump into him she does. Well, she doesn’t realize it’s him at first, and she doesn’t really bump into him so much as he throws himself into her path and yanks her out of the street and around a corner, into a dark, echoingly empty building. He has one arm wrapped around her torso, trapping her arms, and the other hand over her mouth, and for all she struggles he’s still physically stronger than her. As her wits come back to her she tries to focus enough to use the force, but she’s still too wired on adrenaline and fear to get her mind in strict order the way she needs to to control her power properly, and there’s some strange bubble around him, as if he doesn’t even exist.

Finally, he seems to judge it safe and releases her, and her lightsaber is in her hand and ignited against his throat in half a heartbeat.

“Who the hell are-  _ you _ !” she snarls, finally recognizing his features despite the way the dim blue glow casts strange shadows on his face.

He looks different, his helmet and mask and robes abandoned in favor of something more like your average spacer, a shirt and pants and half-zipped jacket. She thinks he wouldn’t look out of place in Maz’s cantina, would almost be unrecognizable if not for the angry, jagged scar crossing his face. The sight of it fills her with a sense of pride-  _ she  _ did that to him, and he has to be reminded of her triumph and his weakness every time he sees it, and it makes her feel smug and vindicated. His hands are raised next to his head in a universal indication of peace, and her eyes flicker down to his hip and find only a blaster. She knows as well as he does that he could have the weapon in his hand in half a second, but she’s sure he thinks the gesture means something.

“Have you been following me?” she demands, leaning into the lightsaber.

“No,” he says. “Well, not for more than a block or two.”

“Why did you grab me?”

“You were being chased.”

“Did you think you’d kill me yourself?”

“I have no desire to kill you,” he says, that same casual, disarming honesty he gave her when she was strapped to that awful chair. “Frankly I just want you to carry on your way and let me carry on mine.”

“Fat chance,” she spits. “What are you doing down here?”

“Looking for work.”

She narrows her eyes. “Liar.”

“I’ll swear by whatever you want me to. I’m not here for any nefarious purposes, unless whoever decides to give me work is up to something nefarious, and even then it’ll be- minimally nefarious. No planet-destroying.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t expect you to. But it’s the truth.”

Rey glares at him for another moment. “I’m taking you back to the Resistance so you can stand trial for your crimes.”

He grimaces. “Can’t you just cut my head off here and be done with it?”

“That’s not how justice works. Not that you would know anything about it.”

Ren- or is he still Ren, if he’s apparently not with the First Order anymore?- gives her an unimpressed look. “My mother was a senator.”

Rey presses her lips together in a tight line and gropes along her belt for the pouch holding the restrainers she keeps, her other hand still holding the saber against his neck. “Put your hands behind your back,” she says, and he obeys, turning around compliantly.

She’s fastened the restrainers around one of his wrists when his leg kicks out, sweeping her feet out from under her, and she manages to stay standing and get her saber back at his neck, but isn’t quick enough to stop him getting his blaster out and pressing it to the underside of her chin, and they’re at a standoff.

“I’m not a threat to you-”

“Says the man with a gun to my head,” she interrupts.

He ignores her. “I’m not a threat. I’m not with the First Order. I can’t even use the force.” He tugs down the collar of his shirt to show her a tattoo settled at the base of his neck, just above the juncture of his shoulder. It’s jagged and uneven, as if he cut it there himself, and it gives off a strange sort of aura that makes her feel unbalanced and edgy. She doesn’t recognize the symbol, but she commits it to memory to ask Luke about later. “I don’t want anything to do with the war, or the Resistance, or any of it, and I don’t want to die, so I’m going to ask you,  _ nicely _ , to just let me go.”

For a moment, she just looks at him, into his eyes, tries to reach out and see if he’s telling the truth, but just encounters that weird bubble again, and she believes him. He is, at the very least, deep in hiding, cut off from the force- and she can’t even imagine what that’s like, for someone like him, who’s been so deeply connected his entire life- and not a danger to the Resistance.

“Why aren’t you with the First Order?”

“That’s a long story.”

“I have to have something to tell to your mother when I get back and report I’ve found you alive,” she says, and before she can think twice, continues, “and I hope I can justify why I’m letting you go.” She extinguishes her lightsaber and replaces it on her belt, heart pounding with the risk she’s just taken, but at the same time she feels completely certain. He won’t kill her.

He takes the blaster away from her, slowly, then gestures to the scar on his face. “You beat me,” he says, simply. “If I went back to Snoke in disgrace, he’d make me wish you’d killed me, so as far as he knows, you did.”

“Is that it?” she asks. “You were afraid?”

“Is survival not enough, scavenger?” he says, the pointed epithet carrying another meaning, and she glares at him.

“No,” she replies, short. “It’s not.”

“Unfortunately, everyone wants to kill me, so righteousness isn’t on the table.”

“You could turn yourself in, that would be the right thing to do.”

He laughs, short and humorless. “And hurt my mother by forcing her to sentence me to death? I prefer the petty crime, thank you.”

Rey has no response for that- there’s a part of her that can never reconcile the villain with the beloved son, and when she looks at him again, her eyes adjusted to the darkness, he looks unnervingly like his father, and she has to look away. “Just go,” she says, quietly.

In the doorway, he turns back to her. “I’m sorry,” he says. She doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, and doubts he does either. And then he’s gone.

She leaves the encounter out of her official report, but gets the General alone for a moment, and tells her, quietly, that he’s alive, and if she didn’t know better she’d swear she saw a tear in Leia Organa’s eye.


	19. 17. "You're embarrassing yourself"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received this prompt like a million years ago on tumblr from someone who seems to have deactivated or something but i wrote it so here it is!

“Rey,” he said, again, for the millionth time, following close behind her down the street. “Rey. Talk to me. Rey. You can’t ignore me forever. Rey.”

Ben couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders hitched higher and she walked faster.

“Rey, come on. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”

She stopped and turned on her heel. “Go. Away.”

“Not until you fucking talk to me,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, just as stubborn as her.

“People are staring.” She was right, and he could feel his ears going red, but he wouldn’t give in, and kept his eyes firmly on her.

“They won’t be if you come home and talk to me.”

“You mean  _ your _ apartment, where I  _ don’t _ live.” Rey crossed her arms as well, and they were in a standoff, staring each other down on the sidewalk outside the park.

“Semantics.”

Rey scowled. “Just stop, Ben. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Do you think I care?” He laughed, short and humorless. “Fuck, Rey, I’d juggle knives naked in the street if it got you to stop running and tell me what you’re upset about.”

Her mouth tightened, but then she sighed, arms dropping, all the fight going out of her. “Fine.” She turned and walked towards a picnic table and sat resolutely down, pointing him towards the other side.

“Please tell me why you’re angry,” he said, tired now that he wasn’t chasing her anymore.

Her hands curled tightly into fists on the wooden tabletop. He reached towards her, but she pulled her hand away from his. “I found the letter,” she said, finally. “From First Order.”

Ben frowned. “You’re mad because of a job offer?”

Rey took a deep breath and shut her eyes, and he could tell she was fighting some overwhelming emotion. “I’m  _ mad _ ,” she said, slowly, “because you’re moving to  _ fucking _ California without even  _ telling  _ me.”

“What?” he said, genuinely baffled.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t care that you took the job, Ben, you deserve that opportunity, but I can’t forgive you not at least trying to talk-”

“I didn’t take the job,” he said, interrupting her.

She stared at him for a moment. “Come again?”

“I said no. I don’t want the job.”

Rey gaped at him. “Why the hell not? It’s a great opportunity!”

Ben huffed. “You were  _ just _ mad at me because you thought I took the job, now you’re mad because I didn’t?”

She smacked his hand. “ _ No _ , you walnut, I was mad because I thought you took it without telling me. Why wouldn’t you take it?”

He started ticking off reasons on his fingers. “The First Order isn’t doing anything I want to participate in, the CEO is a bastard, I’d have to move to California and you  _ know _ I hate avocados.” He paused, the tips of his ears going red where they poked out of his long hair. “And I didn’t want to leave you,” he finished, softly.

Rey felt her stomach flutter and she bit back a smile as she reached out to wrap her hand around his. “You could’ve taken it,” she said. “I don’t want to hold you back. We could’ve done long distance.”

He snorted. “No we couldn’t, you’re way too clingy.” She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Fine, I’d miss you too much.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re not holding me back, Rey.”

“But-”

“There’s nothing for me there.” He pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I’m right where I want to be, and I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
